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- What’s Been Happening in our MAKE│NZ Community
- Future Events
- News From The World of Manufacturing
- Other News of Interest to Manufacturers
- Fun Facts
What’s Been Happening in our MAKE│NZ Community
It’s that time of year again – EMEX 2026 is on the horizon and that means, we’re excited to announce…
The 4th New Zealand Manufacturing Industry Conference!
At the Auckland Showgrounds, to kick off EMEX 2026, May 26th we’ll be hosting a full day conference. We’ll be running through a rich programme of case studies, reviews, and practical insights, delving into AI, Industry 4.0 integration, robotics and human‑robot collaboration, future‑ready skills, and workforce upskilling. Complementing this are sessions on growing manufacturing start‑ups, preparing investors and owners for new opportunities, and navigating succession—whether passing the business to the next generation, merging for scale, or aligning with international buyers.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing some of the details of each talk, whos presenting, and what you can expect.
Tickets are on sale from today until the 19th of May, and as a special treat we’ll be offering 10% off both ticket types (MAKE│NZ Community members and those who aren’t) from now until the 24th of April!
You can find the programme, special discounts, and more HERE
Future Events
• We’ve partnered with ExportNZ to help share the word about the upcoming State of the Export Sector, presented by New Zealand’s Minister for Trade and Investment, Todd McClay. If you’re interested in attending you can find tickets and more information HERE.
Important Notice- this event has had to be postponed due to issues with the Ministers schedule, and the new date will be on the 16th of June, same time same place.
News From The World of Manufacturing
Latest developments in the Gulf War aren’t really encouraging to those depending on reliable supplies of oil from the Gulf states. That will be the case in particular for those countries like China and India that have recently still been able to receive shipments of oil from Iran. US threats to block those supplies will reduce overall supplies globally and drive up prices especially for those – like New Zealand – that are depending on refined products from Asian suppliers.
To gauge the impact of these developments on manufacturers in Canterbury and beyond it would be great if we could get as many of you as possible to answer five basic questions. Please provide your answers on a scale from 0 to 5, where zero is “not impacted at all” to five – “severely impacted”:
For the sake of being able to provide speedy feedback to our members, please provide your answers by 5 p.m. Friday, April 17. We’ll treat all your responses in confidence and pooled results will be published in next week’s Tuesday Top-up.
Other news of interest to manufacturers
•As we experience major disruptions to our supply of oil and gas, and products derived from oil and gas, it may seem far-fetched to talk about unrelated changes in global trade patterns. And yet, these changes reflect underlying trends that are likely to persist when the current energy crisis will be gone and forgotten.
•The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), in a recent report, has highlighted the major recent movements in global trade patterns:
Note that the drop in the trade of energy resources reflects the situation in 2025. Who knows what that figure will look like in a year’s time.
To illustrate what the dramatic rise in global trade in AI-related goods means in real-world terms, look no further than the steep rise in the demand for memory chips (DRAM) that has serious implications for other sectors also reliant on these chips.
To be clear, and contrary to some perceptions that ‘globalisation is in retreat’, trade volumes are still rising, but trade patterns aren’t only shifting in terms of what is being traded, but who is trading with whom:
Geopolitical distance is defined and measured by MGI by the volume of trade between geopolitically aligned or non- or less-aligned countries, based on their UN General Assembly voting patterns in the period 2005 to 2022. The latter is a proxy measure but has the advantage of being easily quantifiable.
In the graph above, the MGI also illustrates the impact of the second Trump administration coming into power at the beginning of 2025.
And, finally, the MGI report also illustrates that China’s role as the world’s dominant manufacturing economy remains unchallenged across all three product categories, with the biggest change in the intermediate category and – worth noting – the smallest rise in final consumption (consumer goods):
Fun Facts (some of them not so funny)
•As mentioned before, the direct impact of the current Gulf War on fuel prices is a matter of daily attention. More in the background, but potentially more severe, are supply chain disruptions for other products – raw material inputs, and elaborately transformed products depending on such inputs. One of the ‘raw materials’ not automatically linked to oil and gas is helium. Helium can’t be made, it’s a chemical element. Helium is a by-product of natural gas extraction and, correspondingly, the world’s big producers of natural gas (apart from Norway) are also the primary suppliers of helium:
Of note is that almost 20% of global helium supplies come from Qatar which is facing severe constraints in its ability to extract and supply natural gas (and helium) as a consequence of the Gulf War.
In terms of usage, there has been some ‘demand destruction’ in uses like welding and lifting gases (party balloons) due to high prices since 2013, while medical applications—specifically Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)—are considered non-discretionary and their share has grown from approximately 26% in 2006 to over 35% today. The steady rise of the past five years is also due to the growing demand for helium for supercooling in advanced electronics, including quantum computing.
Conventional MRI systems require up to 1,500 litres of helium to achieve the supercooling of the strong magnets used in this approach. In addition, a lot of that coolant is lost when MRI units need servicing, The rising cost of helium has led major MRI manufacturers like Philipps, Siemens and GE to develop closed-loop systems that only require minute amounts of helium, 7 litres or even less.
Nonetheless, the replacement of MRI machines in health systems operating under financial constraints will be a gradual process and an enduring loss of 20% of global supplies will create problems across all sectors that are dependent on helium.
•Anybody interested in (industrial) design should consider including a visit to the Vitra Design Museum (www.design-museum.de ) in Weil am Rhein (close to the Swiss border) in their itinerary. There are prototypes of hundreds of design ideas on show, and the degree to which each impresses will be in the eye of the beholder. Here is one example, and not even a particularly spectacular one, just sitting in a corner on the top floor …
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